


Kalikori

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Food, Force Ghost(s), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: On the anniversary of Kanan's death, Hera prepares a traditional Twi'lek recipe for their son.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Kalikori

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



On the anniversary of Kanan’s death, Hera makes sareeni: chocolate shells filled with sweet cream and berries, the beloved special occasion treat of every child on Ryloth.

Every clan has its own twist on the recipe. During the darkest days of the Clone Wars, Hera’s mother used to conjure sareeni out of thin air. She’d scrape grainy chocolate coating from the ration bars stocked in their underground hideout, melt the flakes over an open flame, and shape them inside a jumbled assortment of mugs, small bowls and thermajug lids. Hera remembers watching her work. The trick was to touch the cooled chocolate only lightly, and turn it out before it started melting in your hand. Her mother would do the hard part, and Hera would help by filling the shells with sweet berry-flavoured custard from squeezy tubes while her cousins clamoured for a spoonful.

Times have changed. In her quiet, clean kitchen, Hera pours molten chocolate into bought-for-purpose moulds shaped like kalikori beads. She whips the full-fat cream by hand and tops each fluffy white mound with a toddler-sized handful of fresh berries.

‘You’re wasting time,’ says a deep voice, as Hera uses the long end of her spoon to coax the whipped cream into aesthetically pleasing peaks and ripples. ‘It’ll be all over his face in a few minutes.’

The pain in Hera’s chest is sharp and sudden: grief’s inverted mirror image, reflected back at her off broken glass shards. ‘The decorations are for me,’ she tells Kanan’s ghost, drawing on long practice to keep her voice steady and her expression calm. The only thing she dreads more than the reminder of her loss is that one day he might stop reminding her. Let that day stay as far in the future as possible. ‘The sugar’s for Jacen. He can have it once I’ve had my fun.’

A flick of her spoon mimics an ancestral swirl on the kalikori sitting over the hearth. He’s right, of course – he’s always right – Jacen, one year old and groggy from his nap, doesn’t know or care about heritage. He’ll ruin this artistic tribute just as surely as he’d chew the real thing if she left it in reach. No doubt the smooth surface would feel nice against his erupting incisors.

‘You look tired,’ Kanan says, coming up behind her and resting a feather-light hand on her shoulder. He’s more solid in his Loth-wolf form – easier to manifest, he says. But Loth-wolves indoors are a breach of even Hera’s lax housekeeping standards. If he comes at all then he should come as himself, or the version of himself she remembers, with strong hands and kind eyes and the horrible raggedy haircut he wore to his grave.

‘Yeah, well. If you’d take night shift once in a while, maybe I’d get more sleep.’

‘You know I would if I could.’

She does.

It’s been a year, and the loss is still raw. Sometimes Hera thinks it’s never going to heal.

Jacen thrashes in his high chair, his excitement for treat time running up against his ire at the indignity of being restrained. Tiny plump fists hammer the tray table, sending berries flying from the bowl she supplied as a distraction while finishing food prep. One berry rolls under Kanan’s foot, where his ghostly non-weight fails to squash it. The one that lands under hers is less fortunate. She sighs, weighs up the effort of scrubbing out the juice stain herself against the hassle of trying to nag Chopper into doing it, and makes a snap judgement call in favour of the third option: let it set. It’s not the first piece of abstract art Jacen has added to the next-gen kalikori of her carpet. It won’t be the last. At least berry blue is a nicer colour than certain other contributions.

‘You really are tired,’ Kanan says, gazing at the stain with a sympathetic furrow in his translucent brow.

Hera doesn’t want his sympathy. ‘Sugar time,’ she says, setting the last of the sareeni on the plate. ‘Come watch me regret every minute I spent making these things.’

But regret is the furthest thing from her mind when Jacen lights on his treat, greedy hands snatching his first ever sareen. He doesn’t eat it so much as wear it, covered in whipped cream from chin to nose while chocolate melts between his fingers. He licks them, smears them, makes handprints all over the tray table and his bib. There’s cream in his hair. He’s happy.

Hera’s heart, shattered by the bittersweet blow of Kanan’s appearance at his own memorial, jigsaws itself back together. ‘He looks so much like you,’ she says.

‘Yeah. Especially the berry wedged up his left nostril. I’m joking,’ he adds hastily, as Hera starts forward in alarm.

‘You wouldn’t think that was funny if you were the one who’d have to fish it out with tweezers.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Kanan, sheepish. ‘You know I–’

‘Would if you could, yeah. I know.’

She does know. There are days – usually corresponding to the more sleepless nights as Jacen teethes – when Hera can hardly think Kanan’s name without raging against the unfairness of his sacrifice. He saved her life, yes; parenting is life-affirming, but parenting alone is death in slow motion. It’s bleeding out, drop by drop, and just hoping there’s enough in your blood to nourish new life. 

Other nights she sleeps through, and on those days, she thinks of Kanan with warmth. He’s not gone, not really. He always comes back. Like now.

Last night she got a couple of uninterrupted hours, and her attitude sits somewhere between the two extremes.

Her mother fed her sareeni through the horrors of the Clone Wars and Ryloth’s brutal occupation. She feeds them to her son through the smog-cloud of her grief. She understands, now, why her mother went to so much effort: it’s worth it for the joy on Jacen’s little face.

‘I’m glad you came today,’ she says, as Jacen reaches for his second sareen. Some of the cream makes it into his mouth this time.

Kanan smiles, and Hera could swear that his hand on her shoulder feels momentarily more solid. 'Me too.'


End file.
